Or that every explanation is a Wessex explanation: by that I mean an
attempt to interpret the enormous in terms of the minute--but that
nothing can be finally explained, because by Truth we mean the
Universal; and that even if we could think as wide as Universality, that
would not be requital to the cosmic quest--which is not for Truth, but
for the local that is true--not to universalize the local, but to
localize the universal--or to give to a cosmic cloud absolute
interpretation in terms of the little dusty roads and lanes of Wessex. I
cannot conceive that this can be done: I think of high approximation.
Our Intermediatist concept is that, because of the continuity of all
"things," which are not separate, positive, or real things, all
pseudo-things partake of the underlying, or are only different
expressions, degrees, or aspects of the underlying: so then that a
sample from somewhere in anything must correspond with a sample from
somewhere in anything else.
That, by due care in selection, and disregard for everything else, or
the scientific and theological method, the substance that fell,
February, 1903, could be identified with anything, or with some part or
aspect of anything that could be conceived of--
With sand from the Sahara, sand from a barrel of sugar, or dust of your
great-great-grandfather.
Different samples are described and listed in the _Journal of the Royal
Meteorological Society_, 30-57--or we'll see whether my notion that a
chemist could have identified some one of these samples as from anywhere
conceivable, is extreme or not:
"Similar to brick dust," in one place; "buff or light brown," in
another place; "chocolate-colored and silky to the touch and slightly
iridescent"; "gray"; "red-rust color"; "reddish raindrops and gray
sand"; "dirty gray"; "quite red"; "yellow-brown, with a tinge of pink";
"deep yellow-clay color."
In _Nature_, it is described as of a peculiar yellowish cast in one
place, reddish somewhere else, and salmon-colored in another place.
Or there could be real science if there were really anything to be
scientific about.
Or the science of chemistry is like a science of sociology, prejudiced
in advance, because only to see is to see with a prejudice, setting out
to "prove" that all inhabitants of New York came from Africa.
Very easy matter. Samples from one part of town. Disregard for all the
rest.
There is no science but Wessex-science.
According to our acceptance, there should be no other, but that
approximation should be higher: that metaphysics is super-evil: that the
scientific spirit is of the cosmic quest.
Our notion is that, in a real existence, such a quasi-system of fables
as the science of chemistry could not deceive for a moment: but that in
an "existence" endeavoring to become real, it represents that endeavor,
and will continue to impose its pseudo-positiveness until it be driven
out by a higher approximation to realness: